Capital Connection’12, a nationally recognized technology industry conference, will pay tribute to a select group of successful businesses singled out for achieving significant accomplishments with a special “Sterling Company” award. The companies were selected unanimously by some of the country’s top private investors as “market maker” companies to share the spotlight as the Capital Connection conference celebrates its 25th anniversary.

“Marking 25 years as one of the nation’s largest entrepreneur-focused business and investor conferences is a significant milestone. Reaching a silver anniversary is an achievement that couldn’t have been accomplished without a dedicated investor community and the likes of the Sterling Companies we honor at this year’s event. It is due to the efforts of companies like these, that we’re celebrating our 25th year,” said Julia Spicer, Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association.

The following companies are the first ten to be announced that will be recognized during Capital Connection for their industry leadership and business performance. Each serves as a model for company-builders embarking on comparable journeys with the hope of achieving similar successes. These stand-out companies’ successes are each measured differently and range from holding a market or industry leadership position, to continued exceptional business growth, to having achieved public company status, market leadership and high growth performance. Many are Capital Connection alums, having been prior presenters on stage.

In recognition of the Capital Connection silver anniversary, these trailblazing companies will be presented with a special “Sterling Company” award. The management teams from these Sterling Companies will be recognized by spotlighting their business success and with a celebratory reception in their honor held during the Capital Connection’12 conference.

“Capital Connection is known for attracting promising and accomplished entrepreneurs, along with seasoned CEO peers renowned for their accelerated year-over-year growth. During our 25-year history, more than 1500 companies have now become “alums” of Capital Connection, having presented in front of our audiences at various stages of their company life cycle,” Tom Roberts, Partner, Harbert Venture Partners. “We celebrate these Sterling Companies as role models for the younger firms that come to our program each year to learn, to engage and to grow with the support of the expert and invaluable resources provided by our community of investors and advisors and through peer-to-peer interaction.”

Key features in this year’s Capital Connection and TechBUZZ conference:

• Keynote Speakers: Chairman and CEO of Revolution, Co-Founder of America Online and ultimate entrepreneur, Steve Case; Gilt Groupe CEO and Co-Founder, Kevin Ryan; and CEO and Founder of Opower, Dan Yates.
• Who’s Hot: A who’s who of hot companies and recognizable market leaders.
• What’s the BUZZ? The high energy, fast-pitch TechBUZZ program showcasing what’s new and fresh from Seed Stage startups. This year featuring the Best of the BUZZ with real-time feedback from audience participants.
• Easy Access: A new rate structure to make the conference accessible to a broad range of entrepreneurs, angel investors, incubators and companies across all stages of growth.
• Opportunity to Tell the Company Story: An unparalleled opportunity for early, growth and late stage firms to present business models for investment or showcase their success.

Capital ConnectionTM, one of the nation’s most respected industry conferences, will be held this year on May 23-24 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. Registration for Capital Connection’12 with its featured innovative TechBUZZ event is now open on the conference website located at www.capitalconnection.org.

NOTE TO EDITORS AND REPORTERS: Media interested in attending this year’s Capital Connection and TechBUZZ, must submit an online request for press credentials at http://www.capitalconnection.org/about/media. The conference media policy is also available for review on the above web page.

About Capital ConnectionTM In its 25th year, Capital Connection brings together the broad community of entrepreneurial companies and potential partners to help enhance business and economic growth. Opinion leaders from business and government share their knowledge and expertise, along with leading technology companies at all growth stages who showcase their capabilities to a nationwide audience of investors, advisors, partners and entrepreneurs at the annual signature event. Launched in 2011, TechBUZZ provides start-ups and seed-stage companies center stage in spotlighting the “next big thing.” For more information and to register, go to www.capitalconnection.org.

About TechBUZZTechBUZZ was first piloted in 2010 and launched in May 2011 as a half-day conference preceding Capital Connection in response to the growing impact start-ups and seed-stage companies are having in recent years on the investment ecosystem overall. MAVA is dedicated to continuing to foster and celebrate this vital area of our membership by bringing together investors and entrepreneurs in a dynamic and meaningful format. TechBUZZ shines a well-deserved light on the visionary innovators and company-builders in our region who are actively developing their concepts, testing their beta or prototype products and services and pursuing a path toward market entry.

1st Ten Sterling Companies

2tor, Inc. partners with top-tier universities to deliver rigorous, selective graduate programs online. Founded in 2008 by a unique team of education veterans, the company provides universities with the web technologies, infrastructural support and the capital needed to compete in a space previously dominated by mediocre online programs. 2tor is one of the highest-funded education technology startups in the United States. The company has partnered with prestigious research universities to deliver the six groundbreaking online degree programs. For more information, please visit www.2tor.com.

Alarm.com, founded in 2000, is the industry leading technology provider of interactive security solutions. Through its proven technology platform and advanced wireless, mobile and web-based solutions, Alarm.com helps protect and empower hundreds of thousands of residential and commercial customers throughout North America. Alarm.com delivers interactive security, video monitoring, home automation and energy management to users exclusively through a network of thousands of licensed and authorized Dealer Partners. For more information, please visit www.alarm.com.

BroadSoft provides software that enables mobile, fixed-line and cable service providers to deliver voice and multimedia services over their IP-based networks. The Company's software, BroadWorks®, enables service providers to provide enterprises and consumers with a range of cloud-based, or hosted, IP multimedia communications, such as hosted IP private branch exchanges, video calling, unified communications, collaboration and converged mobile and fixed-line services. For more information, please visit www.broadsoft.com.

Founded in 1999, Cvent is the world’s largest meetings and event management technology company and has over 950 employees worldwide. Cvent offers web-based software for meeting site selection, online event registration, event management, e-mail marketing, and web surveys, and helps over 10,000 clients in 90 countries manage hundreds of thousands of events, surveys and e-mail campaigns. The company has processed over $2 billion in online payments and has managed over 30 million event registrations and survey responses for its clients. Cvent’s client base ranges from small non-profits to large corporations, and includes over 30 companies from the Fortune 100. A leading authority on Strategic Meetings Management (SMM), Cvent’s technology has been used to implement SMM programs around the world. For more information, please visit www.cvent.com.

Eloqua provides solutions to help its customers accelerate revenue growth through Revenue Performance Management. Eloqua provides powerful business insight to inform marketing and sales decisions today that drive revenue growth tomorrow. The company’s mission is to make its customers the fastest growing companies on Earth. More than 1,000 clients rely on the marketing automation power of Eloqua to improve demand generation and lead management while driving more qualified leads. Eloqua’s customers include Adobe, AON, Dow Jones, ADP, Fidelity, Polycom, and National Instruments. The company is headquartered in Vienna, Virginia, with offices in Cambridge, San Francisco, Austin, Toronto, London, Brussels, Frankfurt and Singapore. For more information, please visit www.eloqua.com.

Millennial Media is the leading independent mobile advertising platform company. Our technology, tools and services help app developers and mobile website publishers to maximize their advertising revenue, acquire users for their apps and gain insight about their users. We offer advertisers significant audience reach, sophisticated targeting capabilities and the ability to deliver rich and engaging ad experiences to consumers on their mobile connected devices.

Opower is the global leader in energy information software providing the utility industry’s only cross-channel customer engagement platform proven to drive energy efficiency gains on a large scale. Using cutting-edge behavioral science and patent-pending data analytics, the Opower platform enables utilities to provide targeted energy data and advice to individual customers. More than 70 utilities—including 8 of the 10 largest in the US—partner with Opower to improve the effectiveness of their energy-efficiency portfolios and motivate their customers to become more energy efficient, and increase the level of customer engagement and overall customer satisfaction. For utilities with Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), the Opower platform represents a cost-effective way to convert hourly data into measurable energy savings, delivering a clear return on investment directly to the customers. Founded in 2007 and privately held, Opower is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, and has regional offices in San Francisco, California, and London, England.

Primatics Financial is the market-leading enterprise software company that uses its proven domain expertise to provide integrated solutions for complex business problems in the financial services industry. Primatics combines domain-rich, enterprise software and integrated services to enable clients to better process, model and analyze their loan portfolio, comply with existing and new regulatory requirements, and grow their business. Its solution, which is used by many of the most important industry leaders, delivers timely, repeatable, scalable, automated and controlled results for institutions in today’s rapidly-changing financial market and regulatory environment.

ScienceLogic facilitates centralized IT operations and dynamic cloud management by uniting and correlating critical IT functions such as performance, fault, availability, asset, service desk, automation, and event management, all in a single product. The cohesive ScienceLogic platform provides an accurate, actionable view of business service delivery across any mix of physical, virtual and cloud environments. Beyond just monitoring, ScienceLogic technology gives service providers and enterprises the management and customization capabilities needed to deliver optimal application performance, improve IT efficiency, and confidently move to new architectures and differentiated service offerings.

TEOCO (The Employee Owned Company) is a leading provider of assurance and analytics solutions to communications service providers worldwide. By taming the glut of telecom network, operational and business data, TEOCO leverages its expertise and ‘big data’ and ‘real-time’ capabilities to analyze and optimize network and business performance. We help over 100 of the largest service providers around the world to run their businesses more efficiently and effectively by delivering solutions service providers require to remain competitive and profitable in rapidly evolving industry. TEOCO is devoted to constant innovation. We are setting new standards in technology solutions, with a strategic emphasis on growing an organization that puts people and planning before profits. The core ethical values that were adopted when TEOCO was founded remain our guiding principles today. We take great pride in our work and in providing meaningful business results for our customers.